Car­ol Boon

A 15-year old girl lay in a Cana­di­an hos­pi­tal bed with a tu­mor wrapped around her spine await­ing surgery, which at the time could not be per­formed in Trinidad. The sur­geon en­tered her room and, as hos­pi­tal pro­ce­dure dic­tates, warned her of the pos­si­ble con­se­quences of pro­ce­dure for which her con­sent was re­quired. He mat­ter-of-fact­ly ex­plained the pos­si­bil­i­ty of los­ing the use of her blad­der and bow­el func­tions and even her legs, yet the young pa­tient sum­moned all her strength and gave him per­mis­sion to pro­ceed.The surgery was suc­cess­ful and she went on to make a full re­cov­ery yet that mo­ment in her hos­pi­tal room, Leah De Souza says, changed her out­look for­ev­er. It was the mo­ment she learned to ap­pre­ci­ate and love life and to see on­ly the pos­i­tive and beau­ty in every­thing.

Now in her 30s, Leah De Souza is a con­fi­dent, self-aware and suc­cess­ful busi­ness­woman who, much to her sur­prise, was re­cent­ly cho­sen as a fi­nal­ist in the 'Young En­tre­pre­neur' cat­e­go­ry of the Ac­tion­COACH-spon­sored Busi­ness Ex­cel­lence Awards � an in­ter­na­tion­al com­pe­ti­tion cre­at­ed to rec­og­nize the 'Best of the Best' in the small-and-medi­um sized busi­ness (SMB) sec­tor and hailed as the world's pre­mier awards pro­gramme for the sec­tor.Leah, who in 2005 took over the man­age­ment of 'Train­mar' -- a small busi­ness train­ing com­pa­ny for the mar­itime sec­tor found­ed by her moth­er in 1996 -- has in sev­en short years, trans­formed and grown the com­pa­ny in­to a lead­ing provider of Work­place Learn­ing and De­vel­op­ment So­lu­tions for pri­vate and pub­lic sec­tor or­gan­i­sa­tions through­out the Caribbean. The young Train­ing and De­vel­op­ment Con­sul­tant and Mas­ter­mind Coach� was more than a lit­tle sur­prised when she re­ceived word that she had been cho­sen as an Ac­tion­COACH 'Young En­tre­pre­neur' fi­nal­ist.

"I've nev­er re­ceived ac­co­lades or awards here in Trinidad. I en­tered the com­pe­ti­tion by chance. I got a newslet­ter which said tell your sto­ry and I told mine. I wrote about join­ing 'Train­mar', what I'd done since, how I'd grown not on­ly the busi­ness but al­so as a per­son and pro­fes­sion­al, and then I just chucked it aside. When I got the let­ter telling me that I was a fi­nal­ist, I thought, 'Is this re­al­ly hap­pen­ing to me � some girl from Trinidad?' In fact, I didn't tell any­one the news for a week." Af­ter get­ting used to the idea, Leah some­what re­luc­tant­ly de­cid­ed to at­tend the two-day Busi­ness Fo­rum and Awards Cer­e­mo­ny in Las Ve­gas telling her­self, "You make that trip, Leah. It's not about win­ning. It's about hav­ing been recog­nised. Some­one read and felt your sto­ry and is telling you, 'You're valid and wor­thy.'" She went and has nei­ther re­gret­ted the ex­pe­ri­ence nor her de­ci­sion to re­turn to Trinidad from France, where she earned her De­gree in Eng­lish Lan­guage and Cul­ture from the Uni­ver­si­ty of Mont­pel­li­er, to be with her fam­i­ly and run her moth­er's com­pa­ny. By then, she had lived and worked for nine years in France, Switzer­land and Italy.

"Train­mar' is my world. I am pas­sion­ate about im­prove­ment and about help­ing peo­ple find their way to pos­i­tive change. Our core be­lief is that you can have the best process­es, sys­tems, tech­nol­o­gy and equip­ment, but it is the peo­ple who make those things func­tion at their best. Our work is about achiev­ing re­sults; it's about en­gag­ing peo­ple and show­ing them crit­i­cal skills they can use on the job." Tak­ing a per­son­al in­ter­est in un­der­stand­ing her clients' busi­ness is what she feels has set 'Train­mar' apart from sim­i­lar train­ing ser­vices. "Even though their goals may be the same, every com­pa­ny's cul­ture is dif­fer­ent so we spend a lot of time un­der­stand­ing each of our clients' or­gan­i­sa­tion­al cul­tures and then, adapt our pro­grammes and ini­tia­tives it. I think our clients have come to ap­pre­ci­ate that as well as the cal­i­bre of our fac­ul­ty of ex­pe­ri­enced pro­fes­sion­al and high­ly re­gard­ed train­ers and fa­cil­i­ta­tors sourced from around the world."

Lead­ing 'Train­mar' may be her world, but there seems to be no stop­ping Leah's en­tre­pre­neur­ial spir­it. In 2009, she felt it was time to start some­thing new and ex­pe­ri­ence what it was like to build a busi­ness and brand from the ground up, so while nev­er los­ing fo­cus on her re­spon­si­bil­i­ties of run­ning 'Train­mar', Leah launched in­to busi­ness in an en­tire­ly new sec­tor open­ing a fash­ion store for women at 101 Tra­garete Road called 'In­dulge Cloth­ing'. Hav­ing re­cent­ly cel­e­brat­ed the store's third an­niver­sary, the 13,000-plus fan fol­low­ing of the In­dulge Cloth­ing's Face­book page stands as tes­ti­mo­ny to the suc­cess of her ven­ture.

"I may be new to the re­tail busi­ness but I think I have a good eye for fash­ion and style," this young en­tre­pre­neur ex­pressed, her un­der­stand­ing of pre-plan­ning of busi­ness de­vel­op­ment and mar­ket­ing clear­ly ev­i­dent as she spoke. "I cre­at­ed the 'In­dulge Cloth­ing' brand be­fore any­thing else. I know in my head what the 'In­dulge Woman' looks like, how she dress­es and feels. She is con­fi­dent, out­go­ing, fun and fab­u­lous. She en­joys life and doesn't take her­self too se­ri­ous­ly. We are about smil­ing, be­ing pos­i­tive and non-dis­crim­i­nat­ing. That's im­por­tant to me and it's why we launched a small but grow­ing Plus-size line two years ago."

Recog­nis­ing that most women have in­se­cu­ri­ties, Leah wants her cloth­ing store -- which of­fers a com­plete styling range from footwear, hand­bags and ac­ces­sories to ca­su­al, for­mal,busi­ness and even swimwear -- to help women feel pos­i­tive­ly re­gal and good about who they are. It is why she places such em­pha­sis on help­ing to style 'In­dulge Cloth­ing' cus­tomers. "That mo­ment af­ter we've styled a cus­tomer, when she looks in the mir­ror and can say to her­self, 'You know what? I'm look­ing good!' is mag­i­cal. For me, it's pow­er­ful to see women feel­ing their beau­ty and own­ing that feel­ing."

Per­haps it's be­cause in mo­ments like those, she sees a re­flec­tion of her­self � a woman who ful­ly em­braces who she is. "I am au­then­tic and very much a per­son who knows her­self. I know what my lim­i­ta­tions are, what I'm good and not good at. I am at peace with my­self. I love life and all that is beau­ti­ful and pos­i­tive in it. And I choose not to give them my at­ten­tion to the things that are not pos­i­tive. I want to be 'me' to the fullest I can pos­si­bly be. I'm not try­ing to be some­one else."It's an ex­ten­sion of the pos­i­tive at­ti­tude and strength of that young 15-year old fac­ing life-chang­ing surgery so many years ago, who coura­geous­ly faced the worst yet be­lieved on­ly in the best out­come.